Orshe

There’s a growing recognition that heart-attack risk rises for women after menopause — and that cardiovascular disease is the leading killer of U.S. women. Now it may be time to pay more attention to heart attack risk for younger women.

In recent decades, heart-attack risk rose for women aged 35 to 54, even as it fell for men in the same age group, according to an analysis published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The shift was significant, though the absolute prevalence is still way higher for men in that age group.

The numbers: Between 1988 and 1994, 0.7% of middle-aged women had heart attacks. That figure rose to 1% between 1999 and 2004. The figures for men were 2.5% and 2.2%, respectively, for the earlier and later time periods. Among people who didn’t have heart attacks, diabetes — a key risk factor for heart attacks — became more common for both men and women. But other important risk factors — including high blood pressure and smoking rates — improved for men but not women.

An editorial that accompanies the paper says men are “more aggressively informed, counseled, and treated” for heart disease. The analysis is based on data collected in federally funded surveys, and was conducted by doctors at USC and UCLA.

Bonus Heart: A separate study, published in the same journal, found that the risk of dying in the hospital after having a heart attack declined for both men and women between 1994 and 2006. The risk of death declined the most in women under 55.

Photo by CarbonNYC via Flickr

See the rest here:
Note to Middle-Aged Women: Your Heart-Attack Risk is Rising